


Born Lucky

by TheColorBlue



Category: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dad is a chief mechanic working for an eccentric multi-millionaire.<br/>He picks up weird friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born Lucky

Boxing is a man’s world, and Audrey’s sister, Jacqueline “Jack” Ramirez, dresses as a man to box. She cuts her hair short and wears trousers and binds her chest just enough “to keep it from getting _in the way_ ” and she even swaggers and spits like a man. In a lot of ways, she’s lucky. Jack is confident, and can put on charm smooth as syrup. Pretty much anyone who meets her ends up liking her, and even the ones she’s beaten up in the ring, they respect her. It probably helped that their family life was such that Jack could grow up with so much confidence that there’d never be even any question of behaving otherwise. Their family life has been good. 

It’s always been a little different for Audrey, who physically can’t stand up to Jack’s tall and athletic physique. Audrey’s tough too, but she’s little. She likes her hair longer. She likes the quiet of Dad’s workshop, where a girl can actually take a moment _to think_ , yeah? Also, she spends a lot more time with Dad’s eccentric friends from his work. 

Dad is a chief mechanic working for an eccentric multi-millionaire. 

He picks up weird friends. 

The first time that “Uncle” Vinny comes for dinner, he actually brings flowers for the girls. Jack takes the delicate little fistful of violets and tucks it behind her ear, crossing her arms over her chest afterwards. She looks like a healthy teenage boy with flowers in his hair, which should be funny, but somehow comes out rakish instead. 

Audrey looks down at her flowers and says, “I don’t even like flowers.”

Dad would have probably said something at that point, but Uncle Vinny beats him to it. He bends down, looks her in the eye, and drawls, “You wanna know something kid? I hate flowers myself. Can’t stand em.” Then he winks at her. She can hear Dad sighing behind her, but she’s grinning, and showing the gap in her teeth where’s she lost one yesterday, she’s growing up and losing all the baby ones. 

The next time he comes by, Uncle Vinny brings sparklers that shoot white and yellow lights when you set fire to the ends.

Between her earlier childhood and getting hired on for the Atlantis expedition, she doesn’t see so much of Uncle Vinny. She hears that he went to Europe, and then she hears that Mr. Whitmore had to bail him out of a Turkish prison before hiring him, so _that_ happened.

Uncle Joshua is the other uncle that Audrey sees over the years. He lives out west, most of the time, working as an osteopathic family physician and surgeon, and Audrey’s favorite part has always been rummaging through his kit and admiring the weird tools that he picks up. It’s different from what she works with. Manhandling the engine of a motor car doesn’t have much in common with manhandling a human patient’s body, and Audrey has seen Uncle Sweet stretching and popping the bones of Dad’s body to help him with his back pains. Dad always calls these sessions a “medical miracle,” but they’re kind of funny to watch. 

When she’s eight, Uncle Joshua gives her one of your average health examinations—ears, eyes, mouth, can she touch her toes and “Uncle Joshua, you’re making that last one up, aren’t you”—and then afterwards he says to her, “Now you keep doing what you do now, you hear? Your pop’s mighty proud of his girl, and I’m looking forward to seeing you titled the country’s greatest mechanic.” 

She wrangles some salted caramel candies out of him after that, and then she takes him to the workshop to show him her latest work.

Afterwards, there’s a gap in there too where Uncle Joshua disappears off the map; she doesn’t see him until they’re all working for Mr. Whitmore and Uncle Joshua tells her to stop tapping the glass of Whitmore’s enormous aquarium. 

When that kid Milo Thatch asks her about the family relations, while they’re trekking through the belly of the earth and some such, she tells him, “It’s not really that complicated. These guys just started showing up for dinner, and then they became my uncles. Thank God that it wasn’t a Ms. Packard or a Helga Sinclair who showed up; then the family really would have gotten strange.” 

Then she considers that idea for a moment. 

“Actually, Helga would have made an interesting relation. Jack probably would have angled for some mixed combat training, and then we’d _really_ have something.”

Milo looks at her, blinking like an owl behind his glasses. 

“Jack’s the name of your sister?” he asks.

Audrey rolls her eyes. “ _Yeah_ , dummy.” 

Later, Uncle Vinny gives Milo a hard time for accidentally drinking Nitroglycerine, _maybe_. 

Audrey leans against a truck, arms crossed over her chest as she watches the spectacle. 

If Milo had ever showed up, she supposes that he could have become a cousin.

She still would have punted him around for his lunch money.


End file.
